Well, mark your 2010 calendars, Dark Knight devotees, because April is when we’ll see “Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne.”

Over at USAToday.com, “Return of Bruce Wayne” writer Grant Morrison shares some insight on his six-issue series and how it fits into the mad Batman opera he’s conducted for the past five years. And once again, I’m both giddy for and wary of what Morrison has in store.

Basically, Wayne is fighting his way through various eras to get back to the modern world. And we’re not talking “Captain America Reborn” stuff either. “The Return of Bruce Wayne” will see the original Dark Knight in the Late-Paleolithic Era, Pilgrim-era, even Western times. Yowza.

Hit the jump for what Morrison has to say about the miniseries, plus some context for that pictured Batman pirate.

This is more for me about putting Batman/Bruce Wayne through my own, and my collaborators’ version, of the ultimate test of who and what he is. So far I’ve had him overcome the Devil, Madness and Death; now we see him, truly lost, amnesiac, and stripped down to basic human survival mode in some extremely hostile environments and unfamiliar situations. He’s the best fighter in his world, he’s one of the smartest and most driven men who ever lived, but we’ve seen him outwit the Joker 10,000 times. This was a way of taking the character off the grid, as they say, and reminding readers what kind of man he is and what he’s capable of. If you wonder why Batman is so cool — here’s why Batman is so cool.

On the one hand, it’s like Morrison is giving narratives to all those silly Batman action figures toy companies come up with to sell more junk. (Caveman Batman? Really? Pirate Batman? See that Andy Kubert sketch with the post? Cowboy Batman? Why not?) Then again, Morrison says he’s doing just that, noting each of the stories is “a nod toward those mad old 1950s comics with Caveman Batman and Viking Batman adventures.”

Morrison calls it “Batman vs. history itself.” Which sure sounds like a Batman for the ages. Which is pretty much what Morrison has trumpeted all along as his “definitive” Batman epic.

I’ve learned to embrace Morrison’s meta narrative flow, to a point anyway. At least with “The Return of Bruce Wayne,” Morrison will operate with an amnesiac Batman trapped in all sorts of timey-wimey oddness. And if that doesn’t lend itself to Morrison’s narrative strengths I don’t know what does. (Spotted via The Source.)